Resources in the history of anthropology

   
   

General
 
National traditions
Timelines and overviews
France
India
Philosophical and intellectual background for anthropology
 
Germany
China
Specific Branches and Trends
 
Great Britain
Russia / Soviet Union
Contemporary anthropological debates
 
United States
Nordic
Contemporary anthropologists:
Homepages, Interviews, Biographies
     

This list of links is not complete, but will gradually be supplemented in the coming months, so keep tuned.


General


Timelines and overviews


Timothy Mason: Resources for a history of anthropology
"The following page grows out of my interest in the Australian anthropologists, Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen. There is little material freely available on early anthropologists, and although there may be other sites providing easy access, I have not found them." The site contains links to many texts on the early history of anthropology and sociology.
http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/WebPages/Publications/Source_pages/AnthroHist.htm 

Ed Stephan: A Sociology Timeline from 1600
The timeline spans the period from 1600 to 1995. Many of the names in the timeline are linked to pages with information on authors and events and further links to a very wide range of online texts, including classical texts e.g. by Hobbes, Vico, Kant, Malthus etc., and some modern texts as well.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/timeline.html

Finn Sivert Nielsen: Mini-faghistorie. Sentrale retninger og skoler i antropologien
http://www.fsnielsen.com/kur/mini-faghist.htm

Richard Lee: Social Science Knowledge: A Report on Institutionalization
http://fbc.binghamton.edu/rlssk.htm 

Minnesota State University: Anthropology Biography Web (Short biographies of many anthropologists, prepared by students and of variable quality.)
http://emuseum.mnsu.edu/information/biography/ 

University of Alabama: Anthropological Theories: A Guide Prepared by Students for Students (short, generally informative introductory statements on various schools and directions in anthropology, with capsule portraits of individual anthropologists)
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/anthros.htm 


Philosophical and intellectual background for anthropology


James Heartfield: Intellectual currents of the twentieth century (Wide-ranging, introductory website covering Analytic philosophy,  Pragmatism,  Psychoanalysis, Structuralists,  Phenomenologists, Existentialists,  Postmodernism)
http://www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/mainframe.htm 

Wesley Wildman: Western Philosophy in Theological Perspective (A very comprehensive collection of course manuscripts, texts, information and images, giving overviews of various philosophical thinkers, schools and themes.)
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/wphil/wphil_top.htm 

.... see for example the course on Hermeneutics and Phenomenology at:
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/wphil/lectures/wphil_theme19.htm 


Specific Branches and Trends


Cybernetics

Stefano Franchi, Güven Güzeldere, and Eric Minch: Interview [with] Heinz von Foerster [on the origins of cybernetics and systems theory]
http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/interviewvonf.html 

Diffusionism, Cultural history

John B. Gatewood: Reflections on the Nature of Cultural Distributions and the Units of Culture Problem (1999)
http://www.lehigh.edu/~jbg1/cultunit.htm 

Evolutionism

Stephen K. Sanderson: Evolutionism and its Critics (1997)
http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr/archive/vol3/v3n1a3.htm 

Medical anthropology

Dennis Wiedman: Major Publications in Medical Anthropology
http://www.fiu.edu/~wiedmand/medanthro/medpubs.htm 

Dennis Wiedman: Notable Medical Anthropologists
http://www.fiu.edu/~wiedmand/medanthro/notables.htm 

Religion 

Doug Padgett: Anthropology of Religion
http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/religion.htm 

Semiotics

University of Colorado at Denver, School of Education: Semiotics (A very rich collection of resources in and information on semiotics.)
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/semiotics.html 

Visual anthropology

Jay Ruby: Franz Boas and Early Camera Study of Behavior (Kinesics Report 1980)
http://www.temple.edu/anthro/ruby/boas.html 

Jay Ruby: Up the Zambesi with Notebook and Camera, or Being an anthropologist without doing anthropology ... with pictures (1973)
http://www.temple.edu/anthro/ruby/zambesi.html 


Contemporary anthropological debates


Lars Risan: Cultural Relativism and the Sokal Affair
http://folk.uio.no/lrisan/Sokal/sokal.html 

Val Dusek: Sociobiology Sanitized: The Evolutionary Psychology and Genic Selectionism Debaters
http://human-nature.com/science-as-culture/dusek.html 

Bruce Kapferer: Star Wars: About Anthropology, Culture and Globalisation (1999)
http://nt2.ec.man.ac.uk/sa/Man99PolAnthPapers/Bruce%20Kapferer.htm


Contemporary anthropologists: Homepages, Interviews, Biographies

AsiaSource: [Interview with Lila Abu-Lughod about US reactions to September 11]
http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/lila.cfm

Homepage: Hamza Ali Alavi [includes texts, CV and autobiography]
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/sangat/HAMZA.htm

Marcia Conner: Learning's reward. An interview with Mary Catherine Bateson
http://www.linezine.com/7.1/interviews/mcbmc.htm


National traditions


China

J.S. Eades: The New Chinese Anthropology: A View from Outside
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/csacpub/chinaout/17.eades.html 


France

Lehmann's Reader: Ferdinand de Saussure: Mémoire on the Primitive Systrem of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-docs/lehmann/reader/chaptersixteen.html 

Warren D. TenHouten: Durkheim's Elementary Forms, the Aboriginal Mind, and the Four Social Relations (1999)
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu//99W/soc127-1/lect4.htm 

Claude Lévi-Strauss: Structural Anthropology. Chapter II: Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology (1958)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/levistra.htm 

Roland Barthes (1915-1980) (Short biography)
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rbarthes.htm

Roland Barthes: The Discourse of History
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/barthes.htm

Roland Barthes: Elements of Semiology (1964)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/barthes.htm

Tony McNeill: [Three lectures on] Roland Barthes: Mythologies (1957)
http://orac.sund.ac.uk/~os0tmc/myth.htm

Links to sites related to Pierre Bourdieu [includes links to texts]
http://www.utu.fi/erill/RUSE/blink.html


Germany

Philipps-Universität, Marburg: «Denken in beweglichen Horizonten» Streiflichter auf die Geschichte der Ethnologie
http://www.uni-marburg.de/voelkerkunde/data2/eth_hist.html 

Lehmann's Reader: A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics (Includes texts by Friedrich von Schlegel, Jakob Grimm, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ferdinand de Saussure, and others)
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-docs/lehmann/reader/reader.html 

Mathieu Deflem: Tönnies, Ferdinand (1855-1936) (Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2001)
http://www.cla.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zToennies.html 

Georg Simmel : A Chapter in the Philosophy of Value (American Journal of Sociology, vol. 5, 1900)
http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/simmel/value 

Georg Simmel: The Metropolis and Mental Life
http://condor.depaul.edu/~dweinste/intro/simmel_M&ML.htm 

Georg Simmel: The Stranger
http://condor.depaul.edu/~dweinste/intro/stranger.htm 

Georg Simmel: How is Society Possible? (American Journal of Sociology vol. 16 (1910-11))
http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/simmel/society 

Philip J. Ethington: The Intellectual Construction of "Social Distance": Toward a Recovery of Georg Simmel’s Social Geometry (1997)
http://www.cybergeo.presse.fr/essoct/texte/socdis.htm 


Great Britain

Keith Hart: The place of the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits (CAETS) in the history of British social anthropology
http://www.human-nature.com/science-as-culture/hart.html 

Michael Pelletier: British and Commonwealth Women Anthropologists in the Late Colonial Period
Cached version: Michael-Pelletier.htm
Original at: http://homepages.luc.edu/~mpellet/ 

Phyllis M. Kaberry: Women of the Grassfields (1952) [The full monograph is online.]
http://www.era.anthropology.ac.uk/Kaberry/Kaberry_text/ 

Meyer Fortes: Some Reflections on Ancestor Worship in Africa
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Fdtl/Ancestors/fortes2.html 

Stephen P. Reyna: Art and Mummery. Towards a Social Anthropology of Hypocricy [Critique of anthropology in colonialism]
http://nt2.ec.man.ac.uk/sa/Man99PolAnthPapers/stephen%20reyna.htm 

Max Gluckman: History of the Manchester "School" of Social Anthropology and Sociology (1962)
http://www.comma2000.com/max-gluckman/works/manschool.html 


India

Amman Madan's Anthropology and Sociology of India Homepage
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/4119/ 


Russia / Soviet Union

Alexander King: A Sketch of Soviet Culture Theory
http://www.koryaks.net/SovCultTheory.html 

Alexander King: Koryak Net (A very wide-ranging site, with much information about the Koryak, but also including sections on the Jesup Expedition, on the relationship between Russian / Soviet and American ethnographers working in Eastern Siberia, and on Soviet culture theory.)
http://www.koryaks.net/ 

Mary Klages: Mikhail Bakhtin (Short introduction to his life and work.)
http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/bakhtin.html

The Bakhtin Centre Homepage (Includes general information, information about the center and its projects, a substantial collection of links)
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/A-C/bakh/bakhtin.html

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Bakhtin Circle (Historical treatment of the Bakhtin Circle and its work.)
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/b/bakhtin.htm


United States

Lewis Henry Morgan: The Destiny of the Indian (1851)
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1851morgan.html 

Franz Boas: [account of NW Coast economy]
http://www.hallman.org/indian/nwcoast.html 

Franz Boas: The Limitations of the Comparative Method in Anthropology
http://instruct.uwo.ca/anthro/222g/bocomp.html
Cached version: bocomp.html 

Alexander King: The Jesup Expedition
http://www.koryaks.net/history.html#jesuphead 

Micaela di Leonardo: The Trope of the Pith Helmet: American Anthropology, Public Spheres, Political Economy (1999)
http://les.man.ac.uk/sa/man99polanthpapers/micaela%20di%20leonardo.htm 

Peggy Reeves Sanday: Skeletons in the Anthropological Closet. The Life Work of William S. Willis Jr. (2000)
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~psanday/willis.html 

Mathieu Deflem: Ritual, Anti-Structure, and Religion: A Discussion of Victor Turner's Processual Symbolic Analysis (2002)
http://www.cla.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zturn.htm 

AAA: American Anthropology Obituary Index
http://homepages.stmartin.edu/fac_staff/dprice/deadbook.htm 

AAA: A Brief History of the American Anthropological Association
http://www.aaanet.org/history.htm 

David B. Givens and Timothy Jablonski: 1995 Survey of Anthropology PhDs (AAA)
http://www.aaanet.org/surveys/95survey.htm 

Peggy Bulger and Ann Hoog: Recording Our Reactions to September 11 (AAA)
Cached version: sept11.htm
Original version no longer accessible.